I love this! This is what I have been looking for in MU*s. It ties skill development to time rather than vague xp, and it creates projects for people to engage in while limiting them to how involved they can be. I think FutureMUD was going to have something like this but that project has gone quiet. It's also similar to Arx's investigations and tasks system, only all tied up into one streamlines system.

As for giving players benefits for playing, I have always said that if you have to be incentivized to play a game, it's work not a game, so why are you playing it?

The only bonus I consider giving players is something like "bennie points" or what Firan called CP. Turn in so many of them and you get a one to three scene GMed plot focused on one of your character's or a fancy item that doesn't give any stat boosts but looks nice and is unique, etc.

Yeah, so one thing I've been noticing as CofD gets more and more mature... they're moving away from specific mechanics in pretty obvious ways. What I mean by this is that the dice are truely becoming secondary to the system; you use them to cover cinematic accomplishments or dramatic events, but not for any nitty-gritty, granular activities. As mentioned, much of this is covered in how vague the skills are (Crafts, Academics and Athletics are some of the worst) but it's seeping into other things as well - have a look at the Hurt Locker writeup on firearms if you haven't already. They don't even have ammo counts anymore; it basically boils down to a handwaggle and a 'yeah, you can keep firing until either you screw up, or go all cheerleader in a zombie movie and spray your load all at once' If all you're doing is plinking off one shot from your sidearm every round? You can keep doing it until the proverbial cows come home and kick the pigs into orbit. Range is handled in much the same loosey-goosey kind of way; it's based on positioning rather than the gun itself, and 'movement' is a relative calculation that more factors in how many rounds it would take a person of x speed to cover a range band, rather than any specific numbers.

Bottom line? I think all the vaguery is by design. There's a definite sense, at least in my mind, that someone got it into their head that they're never going to make a realistic system with the mechanics provided, so they just went with something easy and more or less minimalist. Broad skill categories? Cut down on sheet bloat. Vague weapons? It's CofD, not Cyberpunk. 8-again, 9-again, etc? Some things are just easier to use or luckier than others - and it offsets the standardized difficulty number. As was mentioned, neither of these things makes it more likely that you will succeed or less likely that you will fail in a simple roll - it just makes it more likely that you'll succeed well, or win at a contested roll because you have an edge.
Rote and, less used, Advanced Action are a slightly stickier point - but both of those basically are to reflect that you're probably going to succeed on whatever it is you're doing, but still leaves at least a little room for the dice hating you and having you fail.

@Paris said in MU and Alternate Channels:

@Z-01 said in MU and Alternate Channels:

@surreality said in MU and Alternate Channels:

@Meg I think in the case you had specifically, I'd call it too few staffers available rather than laziness, but there are some times I've seen lazy as the cause. Sadly, sometimes 'too many' staff creates the same problem, since no one is sure who has the responsibility to do this, so you have lower tier staffers afraid to say anything without approval from on high, and upper tier ones thinking the lower tier staff will handle it.

Sometimes, things really are so black and white there's no conversation to be had. ('Is VASpider/Rex/Jeurg', for instance, at least to me. <cough>)

This can be a pretty complex issue in my experience. One of the biggest reasons I've personally seen that an investigative or preventative conversation might just not happen, or not happen in a timely manner, is that the person who needs to be talked to will inevitably emotionally exhaust you in the course of the conversation. Sometimes deliberately, sometimes not, and people just aren't very understanding of it when you try to draw boundaries with these people because it's easy to portray it as just clubbing whoever you're trying to handle.

You deal with that enough times and you stop wanting to try to engage people like this if you can avoid it.

You just kind of do it anyway, and make sure there's at least a second person on staff to handle it if it's either on a day that you can't, or it involves you, so you shouldn't. It's just an inevitable part of staffing anything, from a shop to a mush to whatever.

This, exactly, is why I tapped @Coin to be my second if I ever run a thing. Because I know he can communicate with me effectively, and has zero qualms telling me to simmer down when I'm being ridiculous. ❤

He could double as 'a person with testicles' in a pinch, too, but really, the other friend is looking forward to that job if/when I decide to pick up the project again.

@HelloProject I am stupid keen on people being able to add 'I had a neat idea!' project areas to the grid. Doesn't have to be their business or something they maintain. Just 'I had a neat idea for a business I'd like to build where my character just hangs out sometimes' or 'it would be neat if there was a secret cave in <place>!' if they want to do it.

I think it would be very cool if people did build things like the business example to list on the wiki for people to 'claim' and so on; 'keep and run it', 'donate to game-owned grid', 'make claimable' as options, essentially. Would be neat. I know I've had, and known plenty of people who have had, highly cool ideas for businesses or areas of a grid that would be unique and interesting, but they don't feel like jumping through the hoops to make a character to run it (especially if they'd just want to be a customer there, or have a place they don't own but where they hang out, etc.) or meeting whatever the IC financial standards are for the build, etc.

Temp rooms get used for this kind of thing a lot, which is handy, sure, but sometimes the locations described would be quite useful or cool, and I'd love to see as permanent additions to the grid. Provided your core of grid rooms is sane, I really see very little harm in this. I 'grew up on' sprawling, immense grids, and always found them interesting. So long as sensible navigation is possible, people adding a park or a cave or a strange hidden garden or a secluded beach or whatever is something I think should be encouraged.

@Arkandel just a usb hub, keyboard and gaming mouse. A bluetooth setup would be more useful.

There's http://www.mudbrowser.com/intro

It's not perfect, but I've found it works from behind a pretty hefty corporate firewall.

@Arkandel said in Emotional separation from fictional content:

@Thenomain You've mentioned in the past feeling bad when you didn't have enough evidence to kick people you knew were bad out of the game. Do you regret that decision now? Would you have done the same thing today?

It was not my decision alone, but I would have made the same decision. Had Troy or Lemuria had said that they wanted our multi game abuser removed from the game, I probably would have caved and done so. Had someone even under complete anonymity told me exactly what happened, I would have done so. It came down to punishing someone and being able to tell them why, being comfortable that I understood why, and nobody would give me that.

This is very much a "because I said so" situation, but I expect good staff to be benevolent dictators. I didn't have any sort of rule of law that I was going with; I was going with a rule of conscience.

Hell, I don't care if I don't believe that staff does THE right thing. We are human beings, we have a million personal belief systems. I want to know that they do A right thing.

It depends on the target audience, at least for me.

Publicly offered story arcs - stuff that basically begins with a new +event accepting all comers - are the easiest, I think, because usually I want them accessible to all comers and I don't have to motivate them too much. All I do is offer a general sense of what it's about ("social", "exploration", etc), the expected risk level, and maybe some very basic IC requirements for joining ("you need to be a Vampire or ghoul in good standing with the Praxis").

Stuff I run for my friends also don't need to include spoilers because I get to talk to these guys ahead of time; I tend to have a decent idea of where they're at, what their characters are about and what they want to do on an OOC level. The tricky part here is to not mold the story too much after those things or in a way they are then spoiling themselves; if they're talking a lot about wanting to go to the Hedge and acquire a magical sword, I need to be careful to either not do quite that, or to twist their expectations in some way.

Either way what's a larger risk - for MU* - is to make people feel like they're in control, nor the story. It's extremely common for STs to place PrPs on rails which is, after all, the ultimate spoiler if you can see where everything's going and you can't even have an effect on it other than to go through the motions. I feel that's the greater risk.

But as for the content... it's a tricky one. My publicly offered scenes tend to be relatively PG13, or at least with no more than one finds in a Hollywood film (that's my standard at least). Little of it applies to stuff I throw to more specific audiences though since they theoretically trust me, and I know them at least somewhat, so I can avoid pitfalls (or communication is open and they know they can tell me if something's heading into hot waters).

I very much enjoy Scion, and I do like superheroes. I don't know what all I could contribute, and I'm not sure if I'd be full time necessarily, but I don't mind kicking some stuff around.

@HelloProject said in Thought Experiment: Material Design and MUing:

I don't know how many people have read the Material Design documentation (I'm almost done), but I keep thinking: How can this be applied to MUing?

I feel like there's a way, like it's on the tip of my tongue. I think that we should scratch our heads and think of ways, even if it might seem like nonsense, that we could learn from Material Design, even if in some abstract or esoteric way!

We can learn that there is benefit to a well-thought off design document. Notice how almost nothing in it explains why these things are; there is undoubtedly a deeper design document that is used between members of this design team, or the document used to explain to management why this works. Probably during classes for the curious at Google's I/O.

This document is for informing people how to design a consistent experience. You'll notice that the most core of concepts are explained and illustrated before getting to the meat of the matter, and each layer of complexity (movement, color, etc.) does the same thing.

Though all I can think of now is how Google hired a graphic designer who quit out of frustration at the Google engineers arguing over which color of blue to use for a project.

This exactly for me. I'll up the difficulty on a single-player story-driven game at first, but if I find that the experience of the story is being disrupted, I'll bring that down.

CK2 and the like ... yeah. Difficulty up. I play the shit out of those games (1922 hours on CK2 according to Steam).

@Tinuviel said in Difficulty of single-player computer games:

Depends on the game.

If it's more story-driven, I err towards the easier side of the spectrum (though normal difficulty is usually fine) as I don't want to be without story just because I can't beat the Firey Thresher Maws of Doom or whatever.
If it's a strategy game (big fan of Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis IV, for instance) I turn the difficulty way, way up. Because I hate myself and want to see what happens.

@Wizz Also, one thing that would be made easier by having the Auspices be universal (or close enough) is that if we wanted to add a custom breed (like the Camazotz, or something else) it wouldn't be a matter of creating a TON of new mechanical content. Only, like, half a ton. Heh.

I saw you log out yesterday. 🙂

For me it depends on the game, Mage I absolutely want muck around in the high level stuff, D+D and most fantasy settings I tend to lose interest in the early mid-level stages. (Basically when the numbers break down to the point where your character has nothing to worry from standard soldier types, so in d+d usually around 8th level. )

As far as favoring certain builds that to me is a non-issue as long as said builds are open to all and the conditions that lead to favoring them are publicly known.

@ZombieGenesis I think that's true of any Superhero game, and a lot of RPG's in general. Simplicity does not in itself make a system easier to use for some players. For me, systems like FATE or Cypher just feel a bit wonky and loose for superhero games because of the sheer, nearly-unlimited potential for what you can encounter or create in the genre. Or maybe I've just had bad initial experiences that soured me on them; either or. HERO/Champions and M&M feel more 'right' to me by having more defined scales and direct comparisons and measurements (5pts in HERO is 1d6 of effect. Each point in DC Heroes is twice as powerful as the previous point. Etc.)

Superhero games in particular walk a very fine line between simplicity and complexity. If you get right down to it, both HERO and M&M are fairly simple systems rules-wise; roll, add or subtract modifiers, compare result to a target number to determine success or failure. Simple. The complexity comes in building characters and powers. If you look at a game like, say, D&D (any edition), character advancement and powers, spells or otherwise, are already pre-created for you, so there's no real need for a 'tool box' to allow you to create your own powers or abilities. Making minor changes (swapping out Fire effect for Cold on Burning Hands to create a spell that shoots shards of ice instead of flames, for example) may have negligible effects on the system. Creating new paths of advancement or classes can lead to problematic imbalances in power scale (remember how broken the Gladiator class in Dark Sun was? I'm a Fighter that can use any weapon without penalty, even that brand new homebrewed weapon the DM just created! Who cares if I'm a slave; that's just about the default state for everyone here. And who cares about armor? It's 50 Bazillion degrees out and the whole planet is a desert!). Marvel FASERIP is the one system that managed to balance that walk beautifully, but all the powers are pre-built, leading to the (admittedly rare for FASERIP) occasional situation of 'What if I want to be able to do X?' where X isn't covered already by the system.

Superhero systems that get a 'complex' rap are usually systems like HERO and M&M where the bulk of the book is a customization toolkit that tells you how to create powers, skills, abilities, etc. And, several times, they don't do very good jobs at explaining how to create what you're thinking of (HERO actually does a decent job of this, with examples for just about every power in the core book). To be fair, both HERO and M&M also put out splatbooks (UNTIL Superpowers Database/Ultimate Series & Powers Database Series, respectively) that contain numerous examples of how to recreate powers and things you see in the comics with the game system. But, these aren't in the core rules. In my experience, a lot of people look at the size of the rulebook, especially MU players used to freeform, and their eyes glaze over thinking that the entire book has to be known in order to play the game.

Doing systems like HERO or M&M on mush is more difficult because character creation takes a lot of interaction between player and Staff. And Staff also have to see potential issues and feel free to say 'No' (M&M Afflictions, anyone?). It's much easier to be one on one and fine tune concepts in a tabletop environment.

One thing I would love to see for any mush that uses a TT RPG system is a 'Training Room'; an OOC area where players can go and test out the rules and action commands. I think having a set of 'target dummies' that you can practice your +attack or +cast on for an hour or so off grid or when RP is not available would help familiarize players with the game commands and system much quicker. Also, if it's done like the Power Centers in Champions Online (the MMO), players can test new powers/abilities out and examine the effectiveness firsthand, then decide if they want to do fine tuning or scrap the new power/ability entirely before committing advancement to it, it would help cut down on the +requests for 'I want to readjust my power, it's not working out for me'.

In the end, toolbox systems are what I prefer for superhero games, but a lot of times they're implemented poorly in the design of a mush. There's not enough emphasis on actually planning out your character, for both creation and advancement, and that's an important key to HERO or M&M. Mainly, from what I've seen for TT ports to mush, it's either 1) all FC's that are pre-statted, or 2) 'Okay, the concept blurb for your OC looks good, in to CharGen you go! toss the system newbie into the shark-infested deep end of the pool and wanders off to do Staff stuff'

My favorite character death was on Dark Metal. I played a cybernetic pyrokinetic that had a prosthetic arm, hands and legs. At one point some Mage was trying to sink a massive section of the city with an earthquake. Using cybernetic legs, I was leaping around trying to save people from falling into the massive cracks opening in the ground and falling debris, until I managed to spot the source of the magic. I hauled my ass from the city to about like 1000 feet away from the mage, intending to tackle him and try and break his concentration.......

Just then, the Mage failed a paradox roll and went off like a nuclear device, my character was instantly incinerated, wurf.

@fatefan I'll nudge the people over at Tenebrous Isles who have been working on theres - again it is Dresden based because that is what they do. (http://tenebrous.mechanipus.com/wiki/Main_Page) . I know Lem is working on a non-Dresden system too. Slowly the fate mush spreads! 😄

DOUBLE POST

One of my favorite ways an RPG system approached stuff like this was in Eclipse Phase. In the setting Earth is a destroyed nightmare wasteland, which requires all of society to live in space on stations, habitats, etc. It's a trans-humanistic setting.

In the flavor text around culture and how it's approached, they mention that since money isn't needed anymore; that old, obsolete Earth concepts had become a sort of fashion.

A gypsy-esque coin bra made out of nickels and dimes A lucky chain keepsake of a tearing from a $5 bill trapped in a clear, plastic case Old AMERICAN EXPRESS and DISCOVER cards hanging from a mobile in a cramped habitat dorm room

@EmmahSue

I literally buy Telepathy to at least 2 just to be able to respond to that sort of thoughtposing.

Alas, this is probably less easy if you aren't playing a PC type capable of learning it or something equivalent.

@Cupcake said in Finding MU*s:

The Advertisements board off the main menu has ads for a ton of games as well as running commentary on how good (or bad) they are.

You lie.

They're apparently all bad!